Playing catch with Priya, also known as random updates with some Proto-Indo-European tossed in just ‘cause

We must remember that music is more than sound and clamor; it is rest, the silence between notes. I suppose it’s a bit of a fallow time for me, creatively. I continue to plug away at my daily poems – and share them here, albeit not in order – and practice the sitar. I sing […]

Pure romance: What we learn from the Muse and that dude with the arrows

Wild nights – Wild nights!Were I with theeWild nights should beOur luxury! – Emily Dickinson I write an awful lot about love, both in the philosophical/theological sense and through poetry. The kind of love I write about in my philosophical musings, though, isn’t what most people think of when they stumble over the L-brick. Nah, they’re […]

The living shrine: On not kicking ass and not taking names

Around two o’clock in the morning as I was performing ritual purification, I suddenly forgot every martial art technique I had ever learned. All of the techniques handed down from my teachers appeared completely anew. Now they were vehicles for the cultivation of life, knowledge, virtue, and good sense, not devices to throw and pin […]

Lace up those boots: On loyalty, leaving and love, and some moral lines

These boots are made for walkin’And that’s just what they’ll doOne of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you – Nancy Sinatra Okay, this post is brought to you by the shitshow of human relationality that we call Facebook – although, admittedly, the concepts within it predate the social media revolution. In a lot of ways, I […]

The bystander effect: When self-care becomes moral turpitude

When the events are natural disasters or “acts of God,” those who bear witness sympathize readily with the victim. But when the traumatic events are of human design, those who bear witness are caught in the conflict between victim and perpetrator. It is morally impossible to remain neutral in this conflict. — Judith Herman We were […]

The heart as an angler-fish, and other tales of human worth

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? ― Jeremiah 17:9 There comes a point in Unitarian Universalist bible study where you just throw up your hands and go, “Seriously, what the fuck?” This spring, when cleaning up after the ninja bathroom evangelists at my town park, I came across […]

Dismantling the master’s house: On hate, both Pagan and otherwise

For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here […]

The hole in Paganism’s heart: Or, please stop praying for the meteor.

But the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends. The type of love that I stress here is not eros, a sort of esthetic or romantic love; not philia, […]

Love and the anvil: Just because I serve Brighid doesn’t mean I bake. Just saying.

Brighid of poetry, bless my heart with poetry, and allow me to see your poetry in all things of this world. Striding into the dawn light, I sing my morning prayers. Often, I am putting something in my car, ready to step off and out and into the day’s labors. Clann Bhríde has three sets […]

Beyond grace: On universal reconciliation and the unconditional nature of Divine love

I found a little plot of landIn the Garden of EdenIt was dirt and dirt is all the sameI tilled it with my two handsAnd I called it my very ownThere was no one to dispute my claim — Joanna Newsom Today’s post is a riff on the one I wrote the other day about […]